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Buddy Platform buying IoT platform provider Zentri

June 30, 201611:26Stuart Corner

ASX-listed, Seattle-based IoT company Buddy Platform (ASX: BUD) has announced its intent to buy Zentri, a provider of an IoT security and device management platform.

The transaction will see Zentri shareholders receive a mix of cash and/or Buddy shares up to a maximum of 300 million Buddy shares, valuing Zentri at about $36m. The full price will be paid only if Zentri contributes at least $US14.4m in revenue by end of calendar year 2017.

Buddy said Zentri had 1,250 customers generating a six-figure monthly revenue that is forecast to grow to an eight-figures annual revenue in calendar year 2017. Zentri is headquartered in Silicon Valley but, according to Buddy, “maintains a substantial engineering office in Sydney.” Buddy recently opened operations in Adelaide.

Buddy is also in the throes of acquiring US-based Noveda Technologies, a provider of software for the real-time monitoring of energy and water deliver systems.

Buddy said the acquistion of Zentri would add first class connectivity, security and device management to customers of the Buddy Platform while providing a leading cloud data management product to Zentri’s customers. Buddy and Zentri already have an agreement under which Zentri customers can access to the Buddy Platform via Zentri OS.

“Zentri is a leading secure IoT software as a service provider, with a suite of technologies designed to help devices securely connect to the cloud,” Buddy said. “Zentri’s Secure Connected Platform for IoT helps customers get connected devices to market in weeks instead of years.

“Leveraging ZentriOS, a complete product operating system for a wide range of commonly available IoT chipsets, Zentri offers customers a global device management system, secure product authentication, seamless over the air software updates, remote product diagnosis and analytics, and integration into popular IoT cloud platforms (such as Buddy).”

Buddy claims to provide “one of the world’s first data aggregation and management platforms for the IoT and connected devices … providing the critical infrastructure by which businesses and organisations can, in real time, access and analyse the data generated by connected devices, and unlock the economic opportunities delivered by this data.”

Zentri CTO and co-founder, Jason Crawford, said the ZentriOS IoT operating system and Zentri Device Management Service and mobile SDK “provide a truly pragmatic solution for reliable and secure fleet management of IoT devices.” He added: “Our customers want more ways to manage, process and visualise their IoT data, and Buddy’s customers want a seamless solution for deploying and managing their fleets of IoT devices. It would be difficult to imagine a more perfect union.”